Electroshock therapy secrets unveiled

Summary:When all else fails, electroconvulsive therapy can provide unprecedented relief to people with severe depression. British researchers have for the first time uncovered how the treatment may work, which could lead to the development of safer equally effective therapies in the future.

It's hard for me to think of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) without drawing up thoughts of barbarism. How could electrically inducing seizures ever be justified as a way of helping someone feel better?

In measuring the connectivity of 25,000 brain areas, researchers found one – the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – that appeared to be “hyperconnected” in patients before treatment.

That means for the patients pre-treatment, neurons in their left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex act more in unison than is typical. Haederle continues:

This bolstered an earlier hypothesis, says research fellow Jennifer Perrin, which suggested that in depressed people, cortical structures involved in thinking are too connected to the limbic system that focuses on emotional processing.

The findings reported here add weight to the emerging “hyperconnectivity hypothesis” of depression and support the proposal that increased connectivity may constitute both a biomarker for mood disorder and a potential therapeutic target.

This new understanding of possible biomarkers of depression could allow for earlier treatment, pre-empting severe depression. It also provides a target for yet-to-be-developed depression treatments that act through less disruptive means than ECT.